Les grandes baigneuses: a fragment

30 Jul 2015

In June, 2015, SPW posted a fragment of the large painting by Paul Cézanne that is housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This choice was not casual. We wanted indeed to call attention to this magnificent art work of the early twenty century. More importantly however, in an era where the visual universes of the internet and TV crowded with exposed beautiful bodies with the aim mobilize immediate desires of all sorts LesGrandes Baigneusesopens an interstice of difference.

As insightfully observed by Jack Flam though naked they are not beauties and, most principally, the whole composition is not about slick emotion. This is so because a sharp contrast exist “between the sensuality of the nominal subject and the austerity in the way the figures are treated in the landscape. ”